Chantelle

Wow - here I am, I've just created this blog, my first, ready to tell the story of Chantelle, our beautiful 1963 Bedford Marshall bus that is going to take us on some wonderful adventures. I'm going to write this for fun, for all those people whose eyes lit up when we told them about her, and for anyone else wanting to do the same thing, so we can share what we find out. And maybe because just because I'm so excited about the whole thing !

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Finding our bus

We started our search for a bus with a trip to see Mike Nash at British Bus Sales at Cobham. We looked at a Denis Dart, a Bedford OB and a Bristol LHS, which was just perfect. Unfortunately, Mike wanted to keep this particular one for preservation, but promised to let us know when one came through. We went home really excited about getting hold of one.

Unfortunately, there didn't turn out to be many around, so we spent a lot of time on eBay, and elsewhere looking for something similar. It's definately getting much more popular to do conversions, so buses are going to be harder to come by.

We spotted a little advert on a bus preservation site advertising a Thames Burlingham needing lots of tlc, and we arranged to go and view it in its home in the York bus museum. She was really special, and would have been beautiful when restored, but it was just too big a project for us to take on, as there was so much body work to do. We had a most enlightening day, talking to the bus enthusiasts, and we really began to understand whats involved in a full historical vehicle restoration. We soon realised we needed a vehicle that wasnt so precious, which we could personalise without feeling like vandals when we did it.

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